August 15, 2012

This place was great as a café for hanging out with our laptops, but it becomes a real restaurant with table service at lunch and dinner. There's breakfast too, but you order at the counter. The French doors open out onto a nice walled patio — it's a corner in a mostly residential area — and we ate dinner there last night: Montana steak, wonderfully tender. The place seems both elegant and completely casual, the food and the coffee are great, and everyone who works there is really nice.

If you wanted a real picture of Missoula, you should have come during the "Occupy Movement." The fruit and nut quotient was very high. It's still nice, but I prefer Kalispell and Bozeman and even Butte to Missoula. I live in Missoula though.

life goes on. Travel should be enjoyed while we are young and healthy.

I attended the funeral for a 30 year good friend and client this afternoon. He was 80 born, in Idaho in 1932.

Asd a young man he served as a pilot in the Air Force flying for a nuclear armed always in flight B-52 Wing, right out of Dr Syrangelove fame. He retired as a Lt. Colonel so he will be interred at Arlington, Virginia.

The next 40 years he was a real estate developer and an honest man. He had been an Eagle Scout and pushed for fund raisers volunteers for the BSA and got me to do it. He had a way of inspiring commitment by being a committed man himself.

He was a lifetime Republican before that became popular in Georgia, and he raised money for the GOP candidates every cycle. Newt Gingrich sent a personal letter of thanks and condolences to his wife that was read at the funeral today.

He had a stroke 2 years ago, but was still courageous to the end. We redid his will 3 weeks before he died, in case the Bush Tax cut in Estate tax expires in January, but he beat the IRS to it.

I attended the funeral for a 30 year good friend and client this afternoon. He was 80 born, in Idaho in 1932.As a young man he served as a pilot in the Air Force flying for a nuclear armed always in flight B-52 Wing, right out of Dr Strangelove fame.

The difference being, he didn't ride an atomic bomb like a bucking bronco.

I wonder if you Wisconsies saw this in Slate? Wisconsin seems to be the only state considered primarily to be "stupid" by people using Google. I guess this is the downside of your year of front and center politics.

Scroll down to the second (interactive) map and mouse over the states to see the most common autocomplete phrases by state.

"Corkins is a volunteer at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. And he brought along a Chick-fil-A bag on his mission to shoot people at the Family Research Council. I’m sure you’re thinking the same thing I’m thinking: Tea Party."

He shot a security guard so he's looking at attempted murder at the very least.

I wonder if anyone spewing all the constant hateful rhetoric (like, say Dowd or Andy or Corkin's co-workers (who I accuse without evidence, true enough) is going to feel even a little bit responsible that Corkin's life is ruined forever.

I had a bad experience with a couple of their stores where they were authorized repair shops. My Macbook Pro fritzed out, and the first two places said the logic board was basically shot. Since it was out of warranty, I would have to buy a new one. Since I spent so much money on it in the first place, I kept going to different repair shops. I don't know why; I just wasn't going to give in that easily. The third place I took it to finally diagnosed it as a bad cable in the logic board. They replaced it, and voila. Back to normal. $100. I was greatly relieved but more than a little peeved at the first two places I had been. Shoddy, lazy repair folk.

At my Slate link, my home of California googles most often "Why is CA:

so liberal?so broke?so anti-gun?so expensive?

Kinda of self-explanatory. It seems to me "so stupid?" should be in there more than for Wisconsin. We're the ones who are completely broke and elected Jerry Brown to fix it with a high speed train that will take Jose Nobody from Nowhere, CA to New Nowhere, CA at stage coach speeds for triple the original cost that we passed by referendum.

By moving here 3 decades ago, I advanced myself far right on the local bell curve to where I'm considered one of CA's leading thinkers just behind the Octomom. I'd be ahead of her except she has a college degree.

Traveling through Yeehaw Junction Florida decades ago(yes it is a real place), I stopped for gas and grub at the only place that sold both. I pumped my gas, went to the counter and ordered 2 giant hotdogs, went to the bathroom, got my dogs paid, and hit the roads again.

As I drove down the road, I grabbed one of the hotdogs, pulled off the wrapper and took a bite. Took another. And a third, just to confirm...This was THE NASTIEST tasting hot dog I ever had! So O looked at it.

The bun was empty...There was no hotdog! I grabbed the other one...same! My God I was mad, and too far down the road to go back.

I still go through Yeehaw Junction now and then. And that gas station is still open. But I will push my car to Vero beach before I ever stop there again!

Further, I can see Obama election parallels in the Usain wins.. including, but not limited to, the potential charge or racism precluding even the suggestion that Bolt is a doper.. the name similarity is irrelevant but.. if only tangential to the fear I just mentioned.

One guy.. one guy.. is catching hell for saying that Bolt is a doper.. Free Speech lives?

A meanness has developed that takes away the fun, the pleasure of being around people and so I find myself working out a more distant orbit. Again. Most adjustments are easy, just start begging off and stop creating things, but one tonight was not so easy. I was made to explain myself so I did.

The last time this happened I thought, well, just until the crazy season passes, and then it turned out all seasons are crazy seasons and that particular meanness is not going to stop. It cannot be abided and it cannot be affected, but it cannot be abided but it cannot be affected *snip* there went the ribbon that connected us. That moment is a Kubric moment where horribly the EVA astronaut is disconnected and goes floating off into space.

A meanness has developed that takes away the fun, the pleasure of being around people and so I find myself working out a more distant orbit. Again. Most adjustments are easy, just start begging off and stop creating things, but one tonight was not so easy. I was made to explain myself so I did.

The last time this happened I thought, well, just until the crazy season passes, and then it turned out all seasons are crazy seasons and that particular meanness is not going to stop. It cannot be abided and it cannot be affected, but it cannot be abided but it cannot be affected *snip* there went the ribbon that connected us. That moment is a Kubric moment where horribly the EVA astronaut is disconnected and goes floating off into space.

Sorry, Chip. That happened to me during the last Presidential election season. I think politics make people go crazy. (Not that what happened to you was about politics. I just think that political times pitch up the emotions of certain people and increase social nastiness.)

@yashu: The thing about mocking people like Dowd is that these are professionals who routinely deploy personal nastiness to undermine people in political life. Moreover, they are paid to do so and have have eager (though dwindling) paying audiences for their nastiness. So far, things have not reached 2008 proportions but the season is still young I am thinking Palin-bashing levels). It is not enough to counter these people with reason. It does work to ignore them, or lie back and take it.